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Maimonides' Highest Level of Tzedakah: Loans, Jobs and Business Partnerships

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Maimonides' Highest Level of Tzedakah: Loans, Jobs and Business Partnerships Maimonides' Highest Level of Tzedakah: Loans, Jobs and Business Partnerships Noam Zion Hartman Institute – excerpted from: Jewish Giving in Comparative Perspectives: History and Story, Law and Theology, Anthropology and Psychology Book Two: To Each according to one’s Social Needs: The Dignity of the Needy from Talmudic Tzedakah to Human Rights Previous Books: A DIFFERENT NIGHT: The Family Participation Haggadah By Noam Zion and David Dishon LEADER'S GUIDE to "A DIFFERENT NIGHT" By Noam Zion and David Dishon A DIFFERENT LIGHT: Hanukkah Seder and Anthology including Profiles in Contemporary Jewish Courage By Noam Zion A Day Apart: Shabbat at Home By Noam Zion and Shawn Fields-Meyer A Night to Remember: Haggadah of Contemporary Voices Mishael and Noam Zion [email protected] www.haggadahsrus.com "If the people can be educated to help themselves, we strike at the root of many of the evils of the world. ... Men who are studying the problem of disease tell us that it is becoming more and more evident that the forces which conquer sickness are within the body itself and that it is only when these are reduced below the normal that disease can get a foothold. The way to ward off disease, therefore, is to tone up the body."i (John D. Rockefeller) "In bestowing charity, the main consideration should be to help those who will help themselves; to provide part of the means by which those who desire to improve may do so; to give those, who desire to rise, the aids by which they may rise; to assist, but rarely or never to do all. Neither the individual nor the race is improved by almsgiving. Those worthy of assistance, except in rare cases, seldom require assistance. ....In almsgiving more injury is probably done by rewarding vice than relieving virtue. The best way of benefiting the community is to place within its reach the ladders upon which the aspiring can rise."ii (Andrew Carnegie) 1 The Maimonidean highest level of tzedakah is a far-reaching an innovation that stands against the predominate Talmudic tradition of tzedakah which is practically silent about providing employment for the poor. Rabbinic tzedakah provides one’s immediate needs, but no fishing rod1 with which to reel in future meals. But Maimonides, in 12th C. Egypt, is the first to enunciate a policy of encouraging employment. His goal is identical with the Talmud’s – to avoid the shame of dependence on handouts – but his methods involve an eclectic melding of gifts, loans and even investments in business partnerships. Maimonides’ highest level of tzedakah is not traditionally part of the Talmudic tzedakah system but an outgrowth of an independent mitzvah of making loans to the poor which he has synthesized with Talmudic tzedakah. Maimonides’ new narrative of giving, while it sounds very modern, is still far from the modern goal of “productivization” that seeks to reform the poor into a useful component of the national economy. It is very far from policies of modern economies to maximize their population’s resources by setting them to work to enhance national strength. Maimonides is still very far from a modern search for a solution to poverty, seen as an economic-social problem. Yet a rigorous analysis of the new possibilities he opens up is inspiring and relevant to our modern thinking. Maimonides' ideas serve as a bridge between the Talmudic and modern narratives. While Maimonides seamlessly folds loans to the poor into tzedakah as the eighth level of his ladder, there is a deep inner tension between the way one handles a business loan and the way one handles tzedakah. That tension goes straight back to Deuteronomy 15 where lenders to the poor were wary about making loans likely to be defaulted and cancelled by the Sabbatical bail-out that cancels all old debts. The Rabbis realized that loans should not be treated as tzedakah because then lenders would close the faucet and the poor would be unable to find obtain funds to cover shortfalls or do business. Maimonides manifests this tension between being business-like and being “charitable.” At the same, time loans that default may also enslave the destitute debtors and lead them to the most horrendous forms of humiliation and home invasion. Therefore the issue of human dignity, shame and tzedakah are reworked in a new dimension when dealing with loans to the poor. 1 The classic story of empowerment philanthropy is about the fish and the fishing rod. “A fisherman who was going off to fish came upon a group of beggars and poor people. ‘Give me some of your fish so I can eat today,' they told him. The fisherman looked at them and said, `If you come to me and tell me you're hungry and I give you a fish, your hunger will be gone for today. But why don't I teach you how to fish, so you can eat for a lifetime?’” (attributed to John Ford by Julie Salamon in her book, Rambam’s Ladder) 2 Maimonides' Highest Level of Tzedakah: Loans, Jobs and Business Partnerships Why Loans to the Poor are not Tzedakah Maimonides' Invention: Rehabilitative Tzedakah Preventative Tzedakah: The Mitzvah of "Strengthening" that Forestalls Collapse Beyond Maimonides' 8th Level: Edgar Cahn's Time Bank Appendices: Pooling "Skills": Bill Clinton on Inspirational Ways to Empower Job Training for the Poor: Teaching the Soft Skills: David Shipler’s The Working Poor Bintel Brief: Letters of Shame from Maimonides' Egypt – On the Dignity-Granting Power of an Investment Why Loans to the Poor are not Tzedakah The most popular and quotable Jewish statement about tzedakah is Maimonides’ structure of eight levels, and particularly the highest level. But as we shall see it was quite innovative for Maimonides to label a gift, loan or business partnership a form of tzedakah at all! Maimonides synthesized diverse techniques and contrasting rationales of giving to the poor. To appreciate his creativity and his rhetorical tour de force will require some explaining as well as a close reading of the Eight Levels of Tzedakah: “There are eight levels of providing tzedakah, each one superior to the next.... The supreme level - above which there is no higher one - is one who strengthens the hand of a member of Israel who has fallen on hard times, by granting him a gift or a loan,iii or entering into a partnership with him, or finding him work, in order to strengthen his hand, so that he will not have to beg from other people. Concerning such, the Torah says, "[If your brother being in straits comes under your authority], you are to uphold as a resident alien, that he may live with you" (Lev. 25:35). That means: strengthen him, so that he will not lapse (fall) into poverty.” (Mishne Torah, Gifts to the Poor 10:7-14) The importance of Maimonides’ formulation lies not in the past but in the modern Jewish attitudes to tzedakah which identify strongly with his highest level. Let us explore the ways moderns have read Maimonides to discern why his eighth level has become so popular and seminal, before examining it within the context of his own writings. The highest level is “rehabilitative tzedakah” which departs significantly from the earlier stages which provide only palliative care and maintenance subsidies. One may see the seeds of a myriad of rehabilitative strategies implicit in Maimonides' formulation of the eighth level of tzedakah that help reinforce human dignity. But would this be a grand but anachronistic retrospective projection of modern ideas on Maimonides? I myself have not yet made up my mind as to which is the most faithful representation of the historic mind of Maimonides, yet classic texts are to be studied not only for their evidence of the past but for their 3 interpretive possibilities and the way they inspire further developments of tradition. I hope to pursue both reading strategies here. Why, then, is Maimonides' eighth level so fundamental for modern Jews concerned with welfare policy and tikkun olam? First, Maimonides offers the needy employment which appeals to an ancient and modern notion that people should help themselves, not become permanently dependent on largesse. Working is good for the character of the poor as well as their pocketbook. But beyond that, the modern sensibility strives to solve problems, such as poverty, by eradicating their root cause rather than merely relieving poverty's symptoms. Government expenditures on job trainingiv and job creation are perceived as ways of solving both individual and national poverty crises by allowing the unemployed to retool as the economy changes. Maimonides may not have known about structural shifts in economic growth and about technological progress that dislocates whole sectors of workers in old industries, but he knew from the Talmudv that some professions are more portable and reliable in a changing world than others, so job training and creation is essential. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (19th C. Germany) whole-heartedly adopted the Maimonidean ideal which he understood as the mitzvah to make someone independent, so that they would not fall into debt again. He took the Biblical command "to strengthen" (Lev. 25:35) those who are falling economically to mean: "Make sure that he will be strong. As long as he falls again, he has not been made strong." However that does not mean: "You lead him into a bad culture (tarbut ra'a) of laziness caused by continually propping him up with supports." Second, moderns – especially since Immanuel Kant - see in helping the other not merely a pragmatic solution to problems, but the highest religious calling in ethics.
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